Richard M. Nixon has long been the Freddy Krueger of American political life. You know in your bones that he is destined to keep returning....

Nixon’s hard-wired anti-Semitism is an old story. What has caused many heads to swivel is a recording of Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser. Mr. Kissinger is heard telling Nixon in 1973 that helping Soviet Jews emigrate and thus escape oppression by a totalitarian regime — a huge issue at the time — was “not an objective of American foreign policy.”

“And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” he added, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

In New York, the epicenter of Jewish life in the United States, some jaws are still not back in place after dropping to the floor....

“Despicable,” “callous,” “revulsion,” “hypocrite,” “chilling” and “shocking” were a few of the words used this week by some leaders of Jewish organizations and by newspapers that focus on Jewish matters....